I don't know that that's an accurate description of the circumstances in the books. They were born into a world of ever-present and almost-ubiquitous connectivity, and heavily encouraged to string together modular black boxes to build new things. This didn't make them prodigies, it just kept them from falling behind. They lived in a world where even the physical shape of their schools wasn't stable and reliable.

When you compare to kids learning from home during the pandemic, on Chromebooks and iPads, building TikTok videos with CapCut instead of an actual local NLE application... you can start to hear the echoes.